They stole my idea!
CALIFORNIANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Today, on the 13th day of my 30 day writing challenge, disaster struck. I discovered InkHaven. It’s a physical place where a bunch of writers gather together and they write a blog post every day! They start today!1
Why are they doing this? Well, because Scott said so of course!
Isn’t that exactly what you have been doing for the past two weeks Celeste? And didn’t you also get inspired by that exact Scott Alexander video? And is it really true that you’re hot and awesome?
Yes, yes, this is all true of course. I filed for a patent on 30-day writing challenges weeks ago, and my lawyers will be in touch.
In all seriousness, it was very cool to discover a group of people that are doing the same thing as I am. Of course they are in Berkeley, CA and of course Scott Alexander is mentoring them specifically and yes, of course, I would love to be there. But I guess a European can’t complain too much, at least I have healthcare or something.2
The truth is: I didn’t come up with the writing challenge myself either! I stole it from some other guy on Substack whose name I don’t even remember who probably got it from some other guy. And how meta is that huh? We’re all writing the same articles again and again and rehashing the same ideas on how to get articles out there again and again in the hope that one day, one of us will turn lead into gold, or something.
Somewhere along the way, my ego got caught up in this challenge and I am now dealing with the reality that yes, almost all these people are better at writing than me.3
This is the part where I’m supposed to vaguely vomit something out on the page about how we’re all unique souls and the importance of a growth mindset and that writing is subjective and that we’ll all be stardust in a 100 years anyway so why does any of it matter?
But I don’t feel like doing that today. I am bad at writing. There. I’m free.
It’s possible I am just easily impressed. I’m young and I’ve only read like 30 books tops. I wish I played less league of legends. Oh well…
Ugh look at me man, I’m getting caught up in the meta and self-loathing of it all again. I always do this. I don’t know when this started. <im_end_tangent>
Anyway, I’ve spent the better half of today reading a lot of the contestants posts and I’d like to take the opportunity to share some of my favorite works I’ve read today. (and just my favorite blogposts in general).
That’s right: this is a linkpost. It was a linkpost all along.
Scott Alexander
My favorite guy! A lot of these are like 10 years old but they stand the test of time incredibly well. He has so many pieces that are incredible so I’ll just leave you with my favorites.
Sort by controversial for if you want an excellent fiction piece which mints a term so useful it keeps popping up in my internal monologue.
Beware the man of one study and The control group is out of control for if you want to read an excellently written piece on the difficulty of epistemology, even within modern science.
Against individual IQ worries for if you, like I have, have wondered if you should just give up at trying anything because you suspect you might be a g-cel.
Archipelago and Communitarianism for a cute story about the minimal amount of rules necessary for a hypothetical pluralist society.
Meditations On Moloch for if you’re breathing, it’s just that good.4
Not Scott Alexander, but I really like Dark Side Epistemology as well. a formalization of the HBO Chernobyl aphorism of “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth, Some day that debt has to be repaid”
Inkhaven people
Tomás Bjartur
This fucking guy man. Fiction for the current year in the best way possible.
The first thing I read of him was The Company Man, which is probably my favorite piece of writing of the year. If you only read one thing from my post please let it please be this.
I also really liked That Mad Olympiad, and I suspect I will like his other stuff as well.
I knew about him even before Inkhaven and am glad to see he’s participating. His submission for today is beautiful as well. Would love to talk to this guy someday.
Nomads Vagabonds - The ethics of Digital Lobotomy
A long time ago, when it was fashionable to make the argument that “we’re all just in a simulation, bro”. I came up with the thought “what if we are simulated on the upper world’s equivalent of a little kid’s toy computer”. This thought stuck like melted plastic for some reason. I feared they wouldn’t give a fuck about us. I now believe we’re slouching towards this world. Except we’re the little kid.
If there’s any chance at all that we are able to simulate consciousness in the future, we’re gonna have to start asking some very important questions very fast. This piece made me start thinking about AI sentience seriously for the first time.
We are developing the capacity to create these minds faster than we are developing the wisdom to govern them. We don’t yet have good answers for whether consciousness will arise in sufficiently complex systems nor what to do about it.
The Inchpin - How to write Fast, Weird and Well
I liked this piece. Even if it’s written more for an audience that aims to blog commercially. Some good stuff in here.
bright distance - You’re always stressed, your mind is always busy, you never have enough time
Even though it’s a story that has been written thousands of times, I really liked this rendition. Short and sweet.
Lux Ex Machina - When did it all grow wrong?
A cute piece about the game theory of shampoo.
Goodnight friends
I don’t have the time to read all 21+ submissions, so sorry if you wrote something goated today but it wasn’t on my list. If you want to check out all submissions for today you can do that here.
Considering I was so out of ideas I was going to write about my lava lamp today, maybe this post wasn’t so bad. Apologies for the clickbait title, I couldn’t find anything else.
Yesterday*
okay okay Belgium is pretty great I know I don’t have a lot to complain about, so I have to find my own reasons to complain anyway
in my humble onion
Moloch also keeps coming up in my internal monologue
Thanks for linking my writing advice post and for complimenting it! You're too kind :)
"I liked this piece. Even if it’s written more for an audience that aims to blog commercially. Some good stuff in here."
I think the advice is good for primarily for my past (and future) selves, and secondarily for people who either already "writes like me" (but better), or wants to do so.
So eg I won't be happy if only 50 people read my most popular posts, but I also won't be happy writing on very popular topics just because that's what the audience demands.
One of my dream is to be "the public intellectual's intellectual" but I also know it's not the most realistic so I'm glad to just have some of my thoughts out there and seeing what sticks.